Alex's swim journal

Busy week, tired body...

Haven't had a chance to check in on the blog much this week. Most of my swims have been very short with a lot of drill. My body has just felt worn out this week. I did 2000 Wednesday evening around 8PM, 1200 on Friday morning early, and 2300 today. Today's swim was at the Elmhurst, Illinois YMCA, I had my swim kit in the car and decided to stop in after finishing up with a conference at the college. I figured I wouldn't get back to Kenosha in time to get over to the Y. It felt good to swim, but I was watching the pace clock and I was really slow.

The big workout for me toward the end of the week was a 4500-yard stroke fest on Thursday. Scotty did this one with me, so we were able to push each other, but I was a lot more tired after this one than I was after Tuesday. Tuesday's hard 50s free BTW left my lats really sore. It took me a thousand yards into Thursday's workout before I could shake off even just a little of the stiffness. Here's what I did:

Looks like my weight has finally stabilized in the mid 160s after two and a half months of eating completely vegan. I've been taking a multi-vitamin, but I picked up a multi-vitamin today with a little extra B-6 and B-12, just in case there is any deficiency there. I know that the average person can get more than enough protein from the vegan diet, but am wondering if some of my fatigue isn't due to the fact that my protein requirement might be higher than the average person. I have been trying to time my protein for maximum recovery too... so I take a plant-based protein supplement after my really hard workouts. I'm eating more tofu and almost an avocado a day--along with the normal regimen of legumes, nuts, and high-protein whole grains--to try to keep the protein intake high. And this week I scaled back a lot on the strength training. I don't know. I might have to take a protein supplement every day, instead of just after the tough workouts. I'm also burning the candle at both ends at work. Hoping I'll bounce back some tomorrow morning.

Comments

Don't beat yourself up on the swimming front. We all have weeks like you had and the important think is you stay positive. You are working your socks off and sometimes you just don't have your mojo. I glad the weight has evened off. Sounds like you just had a tough couple of weeks and not diet related to me, but you know your body best.

Thanks, Stewart, I felt a lot better about today's workout... like I finally loosened up. I think I'm going to go in for some coaching tomorrow; Carthage college here in town just started a new master's team that's meeting on M, W evenings. This week I'm hoping to get out of the office a little earlier and make it over there. If I can get some pointers on my freestyle, that would be awesome... feel like I'm in a rut now with that.

Thanks for the tip on Lysine, Steve. I just looked at the "no-meat-athlete" website (he has some charts on what foods are high or low in which amino acids...) and find that my most common sources of protein are in fact low in lysine; with the exception of soy... I'll look at some supplements and find a plant-based protein powder that ups the lysine a bit, just in case.